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As it turns 10 years old, the team at Austin video company Rooster Teeth Productions LLC is giving itself a birthday present: independence.

The company is ending its partnership with the web site Machinima.com and will take control of the ad business around its self-produced online videos. Those videos, which the company began producing on a shoestring in 2003, have steadily built a substantial audience. Rooster Teeth’s primary YouTube channel is the 15th most-viewed of all time. Its videos have collectively been viewed nearly 2 billion times on YouTube alone where Rooster Teeth’s main channel has 4.2 million subscribers.

Rooster Teeth, which has 45 employees in Austin, is breaking some of its hit shows out onto their own YouTube channels as it continues to grow a video empire made up of animated shows like “Red vs. Blue,” live-action programming like the “Lord of the Rings”-themed “A Simple Walk to Mordor” and a popular web series being added to the fold, “The Slow Mo Guys.”

Its videos typically celebrate video game and Internet culture but bypass the usual mix of news and reviews, favoring sly humor and a mix of different kinds of media. That mix has spawned not only success on YouTube, but a popular podcast and an annual Austin conference, RTX, that is expected to attract 10,000 attendees to the Austin Convention Center in early July.

Co-founder and creative director Michael “Burnie” Burns said the timing of all the changes was serendipitous given the anniversary.

“We’re going back to our independent roots,” Burns said. “We’ve grown to the point where it makes a lot more sense for us to be on our own.”

Machinima.com, an online destination for online videos, signed on Rooster Teeth when it needed help selling more ads. Now, Burns said, Rooster Teeth will sell its own ads as well as branded shows and sponsorships. It also continues to do commercial video work for video game companies including Electronic Arts and Microsoft. Its flagship show, “Red vs. Blue,” has also frequently been shown in theaters, had a high-profile DVD and Blu-ray box set release last year and featured the voice of actor Elijah Wood on the last season of the series.

As many companies are trying to figure out the future of online video, Rooster Teeth has apparently cracked the code; it outgrew its Congress Ave. headquarters and moved to a building in South Austin, only to outgrow that. Burns said Rooster Teeth is seeking a new base of operations of at least 35,000 square feet.

Burns attributes the success of the company to adaptation. “You can’t sit still and stick with one business model,” Burns said. “The environment changes so fast we have to be ready to adapt.